Out of reach
The target of keeping long-term global warming within 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) is moving out of reach, climate experts say, with nations failing to set more ambitious goals despite months of record-breaking heat on land and sea.
As envoys gathered in Bonn in early June to prepare for this year’s annual climate talks in November, average global surface air temperatures were more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels for several days, the EU-funded Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said.
These “climate talks” are a weird charade when we can all see that nothing is being done and nothing will be done.
Though mean temperatures had temporarily breached the 1.5C threshold before, this was the first time they had done so in the northern hemisphere summer that starts on June 1. Sea temperatures also broke April and May records.
“We’ve run out of time because change takes time,” said Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, a climatologist at Australia’s University of New South Wales.
China is cooking. The US is cooking.
Parts of North America were some 10C above the seasonal average this month, and smoke from forest fires blanketed Canada and the U.S. East Coast in hazardous haze, with carbon emissions estimated at a record 160 million metric tons.
Well let’s have a meeting. That will fix it.
Let’s have an afternoon rally to petition our oligarchic rulers to be smarter. And then go home and act the way we always have.
It’s like something out of Yes, Minister, or Kafka.
I have recently seen it claimed that all of the recent wildfires have nothing to do with climate change but are the fault of environmentalists. The logic (and I use that word quite wrongly) is that forest fires are natural events which never used to be a problem because logging operations naturally created firebreaks, but because environmentalists succeeded in having logging banned in most forests the trees are growing too close together, allowing fires to spread unimpeded. Allowing unrestricted logging just like in the good old days would once again protect the forests from fire.
I have to admit that there is a warped logic at play in that final sentence, but only because unrestricted logging would soon remove all the trees, and no more trees mean no more forests which logically means no more forest fires.
Seriously, there is no point in arguing with that level of stupidity.
If I remember correctly (I’ll look it up later) in the US the issue is Forest Service policy of suppressing all fires, which results in way too much fuel such that what would have been little local fires become huge monsters.
Yes, here’s an article about it:
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2017/12/a-century-of-fire-suppression-is-why-california-is-in-flames/
I saw something in the last few years about aspens being less vulnerable to wild fires so a mixed conifer aspen forest tends to burn less fiercely. However, the conifers are what the lumber companies want so all conifer is what gets planted.
The other thing is that if we had been replacing fossil fuels with nuclear for electricity generation for the last few decades, the problem would be less serious.
The lack of the natural fire cycle also contributes to the spread of invasive species, among other things. Our woodlands used to be shaped by fire, which led to much more open and airy spaces. Nowadays you can’t even see ten feet past your own nose.